House Angst and Other Ruts

Jerry's fave

I've been feeling in a rut--tired of  how my house looks (let's say overfamiliar) and bored with the routines around here.

Changing things in the house makes me tired just thinking about it, so yesterday morning I got the idea of doing six things this weekend that we've never done before.  Here they are:

1. We went to see my elderly friend Marian, who's still struggling with lung problems.  She's now in a rehab hospital in a very posh area of Marin County, near Ross.  After we chatted with her (and she was thrilled to see one of "The Men," as she called the professors she worked for in Entomology in the 1970's, just before women joined up), Jerry and I took a short walk to downtown Ross:

 An idyllic small town available to the lucky few who can afford it

A mere $7.6 million (and I'll bet they still have spells of house angst)

 The houses in Ross cost zillions, and I noticed two predictable characteristics of a wealthy community:  no neon signs on business and lots of window boxes, definitely The Carmel Syndrome.

By the way, the cost of Marian's care in the facility, one of only two in the Bay Area that would accept her from the acute care hospital she was incarcerated in for 57 days, is $10,000 a day.  Not a typo: $10,000 a day.

2.  I bought French tulips for Marian, a first.  They have longer stems and petals than regular tulips. That's the only difference I could see.   I meant to take a picture of them, but I was too busy making sure the vase didn't tip over in the car.

3. Jerry and I took a walk on the  Lobos Creek Valley Trail in the  Presidio in San Francisco.  It's taken 20 years, but dedicated volunteers and the National Park Service have reclaimed the land and restored the dune habitat.

The Lobos Creek Valley Trail, San Francisco.  Lots of native plants.

4.  We moved our dining table in to a sort of nook off the dining room so we could switch out rugs.  Then we left the dining table in the nook long enough to eat dinner at/on it.  Another first.  Liked it.  May empty the dining room of the dining table.  Then what?

In the meantime, I'm working on moving art around and moving some of the furniture out.  This is the before picture:

I'm even tired of the red paint (less bright and less orange than this),  a 50th-birthday gift to myself

Stay tuned for the After.

5.    We bought an edge-er contraption at the hardware store, a scary non-electric mechanical thing that takes a fair amount of strength of use.

Sculptural but scary

  I pushed for electric and lost.  Our parking strip now looks more or less trimmed:.

6.   For two weeks, I've been pricing airline tickets to Costa Rica for next March.  Yesterday, United and American came within $64 of each other.  American was cheaper, so that's what I'm going with; also, from past experience, I like their colors better.  Definitely the first time I've bought a ticket based partly on interior decor of a plane.

On second thought--this is better?

Does that count as six?  There's a fine line between comforting routine and a rut.  Last night, we re-embraced the rut and settled in to watch "Foyle's War."